A communication network to support a virtual environment supporting N participants can be quite complex. In a virtual environment supporting N participants, there are N nodes within the communication network. For a full richness of communication, each node that represents a participant may generate a different data stream to send to each of the other nodes. There is a computational cost associated with producing each data stream. In addition, there is a communication cost associated with transmitting data streams between the nodes.
As the number N of participants grows, computational and communication bandwidth complexities increase in order to support the increasing number of participants. As such, maintaining scalability of the communication network as the number N increases becomes more important. For example, in the case where a different data stream is sent to each of the other participants, the local computer must generate and transmit N−1 data streams, one for each of the other participants. At the local level, computational complexity scales with the number of participants. As such, as the number N of participants increases, the computational capacity of the local computer may be exceeded depending on the processing power capabilities of the local computer. As such, the amount of computation will become prohibitive as N grows.
At the network level, when each of the N participants are generating a separate data stream for each of the other participants, this leads to a total of N(N−1) data streams that are transmitted over the entire communication network. Both at the local and network levels, the amount of communication transmitted over the network may exceed the network's capabilities as N grows. As such, the amount of communication will become prohibitive as N grows.
What is needed is a reduction in both computational complexity and communication traffic under certain tests. As such, immersive communication systems will be able to scale to larger values of N.